From Buying to Belonging: Rethinking the Purpose of Our Town Centres

Where do high streets sit in the modern world? They aren’t the shopping hub they used to be, with the dominance of online shopping. Too many high streets are falling into disuse, with shops opening and then falling under.

Work needs to be done to restore high streets up and down the country. This will drive the economy, knit communities and support local businesses. We recently hosted The Restoring the High Street Conference 2025, which explored the ways in which we can restore high streets to be the community hubs they once were. One of the incredible speakers in attendance was Rowenna Davis, a councillor from Croydon Council, who delivered a compelling case study which we have summarised below.

Rowenna believes that the key to restoring high streets is to transform them into social hubs, places where people can connect and rebuild a sense of community. Find out more below!

Rowenna has been working on a report that looks at town centres through two distinct but deeply connected lenses. The first is best practice: what has actually worked in places that have successfully regenerated their high streets. The second is more human and psychological: the relationship between town centres, people’s emotions, and collective wellbeing.

That second lens matters more than we often admit.

Rowenna comes at this from the perspective of Croydon. Her passion for the town is clear, as she is running for Mayor of Croydon in 2026.

Croydon is London’s largest borough. It’s green, diverse and very well connected, close to Gatwick and has more young people than anywhere else in London. On paper, it should be thriving.

And yet, Rowenna believes there is a giant hole where the heart of Croydon should be: its town centre.

When a town centre fails, it affects how people feel about themselves

Rowenna started her session by looking back at what once was. She described how Croydon used to be a very popular shopping destination. Sort of like the Oxford Street of South London. However over time, it became overly dependent on a small number of stores – Allders, Kennards and Grants. When those anchors went under, the town centre wasn’t resilient enough to survive.

The psychological impact of that prolonged failure is profound. People have private homes, but high streets function as our public homes. When those public homes are hollowed out, neglected, or stigmatised, people experience something close to public homelessness.

If you knock on doors in Croydon, people will talk about what the town centre used to be, and how it feels now. They talk about loss. About embarrassment of what it’s become. About frustration of what it used to be.

Rowenna Davis now references Tom Slater, an academic, who writes about “territorial stigmatisation.” He theorised that if the place you live has a bad reputation, you begin to feel that you have a bad reputation. It makes people lose confidence in the areas they live in. They internalise these negative perceptions.
Rowenna can see this clearly in Croydon today:

“People often won’t say they’re from Croydon. Instead, they’ll say they’re from Purley, Coulsdon, or Thornton Heath. They disassociate from the Croydon label because it has come to feel like a problem rather than a source of pride.” – Rowenna Davis

That is not just an urban planning failure. It’s a social and emotional one.

A simple question: what are town centres actually for?

Rowenna often asks people a simple question: ‘what are town centres for?’

She believes the answers are telling. People say “community,” “entrepreneurship,” “togetherness.”

Rarely does anyone say “shopping.”

That shift is important, because it reflects a truth councils been slow to act on: shopping is no longer the unique selling point of town centres. You can buy almost anything online. You can buy it cheaper, faster, and without leaving your sofa.

So if town centres are going to survive, let alone thrive, they need a different purpose.

Rowenna believes that purpose comes down to two words: earning and belonging.

Earning: regeneration without income is cosmetic

The first word, earning, is often overlooked in town centre regeneration.

For years, the dominant approach has been aesthetic. If only we could make the high street prettier. If only we added new planters, nicer paving, repainted shopfronts. Then people would come back. These look pretty in pictures, they look appealing for prospective buyers.

But this approach misunderstands the problem.

It doesn’t matter how many times you repaint a town centre if people don’t have money to spend there. And if new shops open in an area where local incomes are low, they will close just as quickly.

Rowenna references research from the Centre for Cities on this. They show that high streets in places like Rye, Alderley Edge, or Sandbanks are not immune to decline by accident. They flourish because local disposable income is high enough to sustain demand.

Decline is not inevitable. But regeneration that ignores earnings is.

If we want town centres to succeed, regeneration must actively put more money into local people’s pockets. Not as a side effect, but as a core goal.

Rowenna then presents a powerful case study of this in Manchester.

Connecting people to opportunity: lessons from Manchester and Barnsley

Rowenna recalls something Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, told her that really struck her.

“There are kids in Manchester who can see skyscrapers from their bedroom windows, but have no idea how to get from where they are to the jobs inside those buildings.”

That insight led to the Manchester Baccalaureate.

The programme offers 16-week placements for young people in local growth industries. Young people apply directly to businesses. If they’re accepted, they’re then connected to a college to support their learning alongside the placement.

The results are striking. Around half of participants go on to get jobs with the very businesses they were placed in. Youth unemployment falls. Skills increase. And crucially, people begin to see a future for themselves in their city. Suddenly they aren’t trying to move away or looking for opportunities in other cities.

That is how earning supports town centre regeneration – not just economically, but psychologically.
Rowenna also highlighted how Barnsley offers another instructive example. After COVID, Barnsley recovered faster than many comparable towns by regenerating its old market into a vibrant, almost Tuscan-style space. It combined well-known brands with local pop-ups, creating a sense of energy and variety.

But Barnsley didn’t stop there. Alongside the physical regeneration, it launched Barnsley Skills, a programme designed to upskill local young people and connect them directly to local job
The result wasn’t just footfall. It was confidence, momentum, and renewed pride.

Something that can bring communities together is charity. Voluntary work is prideful work and whether it is a community cake sale or a cancer research bingo night. However, In 2024 80% of UK charities surveyed said they will have to cut costs due to the economic climate (Charity Finance Group, 2024). The Voluntary Sector Fundraising Conference 2026: Navigating Change and Building Resilience conference is on the 11th of February and will explore ways of strengthening fundraising capacity.

Belonging: from buying to being together

If earning is the economic foundation of successful town centres, belonging is the emotional one. For decades, town centres were built around buying. Today, they need to be built around belonging.

You can buy things almost anywhere. What you can’t do without cost, travel, or exclusion is find accessible places to gather publicly. To socialise. To feel part of something bigger than yourself.

Rowenna believes that this is the true USP of town centres now.

In Croydon, she sees too many young people drifting through the town centre with a sense of ‘anomie’, a feeling of not really knowing where they’re meant to be. Many would say they don’t feel welcome, accepted, or at home in the town centre.

They end up congregating in places like McDonald’s not because that’s what they want to be, but because there’s nowhere else to go.

This is a tragedy, especially given Croydon’s youth population. Young people should be a source of energy, culture, and renewal. Instead, we’re failing to give them spaces to belong.

Small interventions can create powerful connections

Rowenna also stressed that belonging doesn’t always require grand, expensive projects.
One of her favourite examples is the Kent Steps. What was once a dark, poorly lit, intimidating corner was transformed through a simple idea: local schools were invited to design each step. Every single one was painted by a different child.

The result was a vibrant, rainbow-like public artwork that people feel personally connected to. They look after it, they’re proud of it, and it costs a fraction of what large-scale developments typically do.

That’s the power of ownership. It’s personal, community driven and very simple and cheap to execute.
Rowenna also discussed how Sheffield offers a larger-scale version of the same principle. Once a steel city, then heavily invested in retail, Sheffield is now what researchers describe as a “post-retail city.”

Retail is no longer the centre of gravity. Instead, Sheffield has leaned into universities, culture, and leisure. One of the best examples is the old Co-op building, now transformed into Commune – a food hall and social space that draws people back into the city centre.

So, through pushing culture and community, Rowenna believes we can replace the hole that retail left behind with something better, connectedness.

Vision, partnership, and persistence

When Rowenna looked across all the examples where regeneration has genuinely worked, a clear pattern emerged in front of her.

“First, you need a vision. Not just a glossy masterplan, but a clear idea of what your town centre is for.” – Rowenna Davis

The second thing she believes you need is partners. Councils cannot do this alone. They need developers, businesses and communities acting in unison.

The last piece of the puzzle is persistence. Regenerating towns and restoring high streets is an iterative process. It’s a bit of trial and error. Some things will work and other things won’t, it’s about staying agile and making adjustments where necessary.

Rowenna closes by expressing how these newly restored town centres offer the potential to create more diverse town centres than ever before. It can create places where people feel invested, public homes where “territorial stigmatization” can be banished.

“If we get earning and belonging right together, town centres don’t just recover. They become places where people can build lives, identities, and futures.” – Rowenna Davis

We’d like to thank Rowenna Davis for her incredibly interesting session at the Restoring the High Street Conference 2025. It was one of the most engaging sessions of the day and filled us with hope of what future city centres could look like – vibrant and unique places where people can connect, support local businesses and take pride in their communities.